Science of Health at Columbia University
We aim to revolutionize biomedicine by understanding and measuring health at all scales, from biological to psychological to functional.
Website: tinyurl.com/y6khjbkf
See our recent paper: science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.…
- Live discussion in an X space on Intrinsic health featuring Alan Cohen and Martin Picard. Join us! x.com/i/spaces/1yp...
- I had a ton of fun recently doing a live comedy show on immortality with Dan Toomey at Good Work. See a clip here, then follow the link to the full 45-min video on Good Work's patreon.
- A beautiful profile of our work on intrinsic health, by David Craig at Columbia News. magazine.columbia.edu/article/secr...
- 1/4 Scientific theories make testable predictions. Our intrinsic health framework hypothesizes that energy, communication, and structure are sufficiently integrated that a common health construct can be reliably measured. 🧵
- 4/4 Most intriguing prediction: intrinsic health metrics should capture early changes in an organism's health state far upstream of disease onset, potentially enabling truly preventive interventions. Paper: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- Peer review is breaking down. As an editor, it's nearly impossible to find reviewers. Editors end up needing to review articles themelves, outside their field. A flood of dubious-quality research is overwhelming the system.
- 1/5 What if aging isn't primarily about damage accumulation, but the declining capacity of your body's integrated health field? Our research introduces 'intrinsic health'—potentially revolutionizing how we understand and measure biological aging. #LongevityScience 🧵
- 5/5 The future: instead of just slowing aging processes, we might enhance the emergent properties that maintain health throughout life. Instead of targeting aging, let’s just target health. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- The Future of Aging Science 1/ 🚀 Breaking: The hallmarks of aging aren't as universal as we thought. Our 4-population study shows aging biology is far more flexible and context-dependent than textbooks suggest. 🧵
- 4/ This is why @NIH should fund more cross-cultural, systems-level research. The future of healthy aging might be hiding in populations we've barely studied. Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s43...
- The WEIRD Problem 1/ 🧵 Most aging research comes from WEIRD populations (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic). Our new paper shows this creates massive blind spots in understanding human aging.
- 4/ This matters because we're building medicines based on incomplete pictures. What if the "diseases of aging" are really diseases of mismatch? Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s43...
- NEW PAPER: What if "inflammaging" isn't universal? Our new study shows Indigenous nonindustrialized populations with high infections but low chronic disease defy industrialized aging patterns. The hallmarks of aging might vary by environment and lifestyle. www.nature.com/articles/s43...
- The 'disease-first' approach to medicine is like having mechanics who only know how to fix broken parts, but don't understand how the whole car works. Our new 'intrinsic health' framework changes that. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #ScienceOfHealth #SystemsThinking
- 1/4 The Paradigm Shift: For too long, medicine has defined health as "not sick." Our new paper in Science Advances proposes a revolutionary approach: "intrinsic health" as a measurable biological state that emerges from energy, communication & structure in our bodies. Read more…🧵
- 4/4 Imagine healthcare that builds health rather than just fighting disease. That's the future our Science of Health program aims to create. Read the full paper: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- Complex systems theory meets evolutionary biology in our new paper on 'intrinsic health.' We propose a first-principles approach to understanding health as an emergent property with measurable dynamics. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- Medicine treats your body like separate departments in a company. But what if it actually works more like a jazz ensemble—where harmony emerges from constant communication? Our new 'Science of Health' framework explains this revolutionary view. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- What if our traditional approach to health has been backward? Instead of cataloging diseases, we should measure the unified biological state that underpins the resilience, performance & sustainability of our bodies. Our new framework: #IntrinsicHealth Article: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- 1/5 JUST PUBLISHED: Our team has developed a first-principles framework for the #ScienceOfHealth based on complex systems & evolutionary biology. Here's why it matters... 🧵
- 5/5 Most exciting? This gives us a foundation to develop quantitative measures of health itself—not just disease. That could transform everything from clinical trials to public health interventions. Read more: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- We intuitively know when we're healthy, yet science struggles to measure it. Our new paper bridges this gap by defining 'intrinsic health' as an emergent property of our biology. This could transform medicine & public health. #ParadigmShift www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
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- Whatever you think about RFK, this is unqualified good news. Not yet clear how big the health benefits will be, but more than nothing! www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/b...
- Amazing new research from Diego Bassani: We can map networks of communities to see how ideas, diseases, and many other things spread. This produces a crucial new tool, SEEDNet, for public health research. So cool!
- Too much competition in science leads to worse science: we over-optimize the metrics of success (publications, funding, etc.) at the expense of actual good science. It's Goodhart's law (see this post I wrote years ago before I heard of Goodhart): maketheworldworkbetter.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/w...
- Meet our member Christine Kuryla, a Ph.D. student using wearable data to tap into complex systems and take personal health tracking to the next level.
- Meet our member Dr. Berhane, a leading expert in longitudinal and trajectory modeling, uncovering how complex, evolving data patterns shape long-term health outcomes.
- Meet our member Dr. Liu, a biostatistician at Peking University pioneering federated models to reveal how whole-proteome dynamics shift under stress in both health and disease.
- There is a citation penalty for researchers who pivot fields, a(nother) clear example of Goodheart's Law. Over-structuring science and the competition that drives it often does more harm than good. We need to reduce competition to achieve more. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
- Distinguishing correct from incorrect facts could be a problem for AI, but also for normal people. One of our biggest challenges as scientists is right-dosing our skepticism. Too little and we buy into nonsense. Too much and we are paralyzed.
- Meet our member Dr. Sen Pei @senpei.bsky.social, an applied mathematician and complexity science expert exploring how networks of biological signals shape infectious disease dynamics—and how their interplay can support or disrupt health.
- Meet our member Dr. Jeff Goldsmith, developing data science methods for wearable device data to study how physical activity affects health across the life course.
- Aging accelerates later in life. Great new work from Arun Balanchandran, @danbelsky.bsky.social, and colleagues extending the measure of Pace of Aging. Just out in Nature Aging. nature.com/articles/s43...
- The science behind blood tests for Alzheimer's has been advancing rapidly in recent years. This is real and exciting. However, still no great treatment or prevention options. And defining Alzheimer's clearly is a challenge.
- Meet our member Dr. Malinsky, a biostatistician blending the mathematics of causality with philosophy to unravel the complex networks behind health and disease, and what truly causes what.
